Meetings: A Waste of Time?
A colleague commented to me this week that he had wasted half of his work week in useless meetings. He asked if I thought meetings had any real value in the work place. Herein, I’ll share my views and the views of a few thoughtful others.
Meetings: A Waste of Time?
A direct question deserves a direct answer and I will try to provide just that. A colleague shared this week that he spent most of his week in meetings that produced no results and were, in his opinion, a complete waste of his time. He made his point in a way that suggested John Kenneth Galbraith was spot-on when he said, “Meetings are indispensable when you do not want to do anything.” He then asked how I felt about meetings, whether I agreed with him. My answer was “No. I believe meetings are essential to effectively and efficiently accomplishing work.”
To be clear, effective communication and coordination are essential to accomplishing work when the efforts one or more people are involved. There is no substitution for face-to-face meetings to accomplish that communication and coordination. Anything else is just a second best option, even if considered necessary.
If you go on line to research quotes on “Meetings” you will find that eighty percent of them reflect negative views. It is evident that it is popular to bash meetings. Be careful if you happen to value and appreciate meetings because several quotes suggest that this only evidences your inability to do real work. Frankly, I do not get it. To me it is a little like blaming a mirror because you do not like the way you look in it.
Let us begin by looking at the definition of a meeting. In the simplest of terms, a meeting is a coming together of two or more people by arrangement or chance. In the business context, the meeting of those people occurs as a deliberative assembly for a specific purpose. Based on pure definition, there cannot be anything inherently bad (or good for that matter) in the meeting itself. The quality of a meeting and its products is a direct reflection on the performance of the leader of the meeting and the participants in that meeting. Bad meetings are the product of bad leadership and bad participation.
If you want to be a leader, learn how to run a meeting. If you want to be a leader, learn how to participate in a meeting. A meeting is a place where individual strengths and weaknesses are on display for all to see and for all to evaluate. When you shine, you shine. Poor performance stands out like a sore thumb. We all know a great meeting leader when we see one. We all appreciate a participant who knows how to make a purposeful and balanced contribution. Whether we like meetings or not, we all want to be that participant who says just the right thing, in the right way, at the right time, and receives – as a result – with just the right collective response. So, become that person who people look to for great leadership in meetings. Become the participant other participants (and even the leader) looks to when a meeting gone wrong needs salvaging.
If you are preoccupied with finding fault in every meeting you are in, small group to large group, you cannot be working to make it the best experience possible. Let go of meeting negativism. Begin by being the conversation (in your head) that you will make any meeting you are in as purposeful and productive as you can. It is about attitude. Tiger Woods, a great golfer, begins by putting the best possible spin on the value of any meeting in which he finds himself. “The amount of meetings I’ve been in – people would be shocked. But, that is how you gain experience, how you gain knowledge, being in meetings and participating. You learn and grow.” Tiger goes into a meeting as he goes into a golf match; he is committed to the win. Turn any meeting you participate in into a growth opportunity. Create your own teachable moment. If nothing else, study the behavior of other participants and the leader. What do you see in their behaviors – good or bad – that tell you about your own behaviors? Do you see in them anything that will enable you to be more effective in either role in the future? Remember, we can learn as much, and maybe more, from a negative example as we learn from a positive one.
Whether you are a leader or a participant in a meeting, there are five key words to keep in mind before, during and after a meeting.
1. Plan – Whether you are the leader or a participant in a meeting, never go in cold. Plan what you will say and do in the meeting. Even if the dynamics of the meeting require you change your initial plan, you will modify from a platform of direction and intended involvement that will increase your control over the change dynamics. Planning requires that you really understand the Agenda and the Intended Result of the meeting. Knowing the Agenda will enable you to do your homework. Never walk into a meeting without doing your homework. You will lose out in process and take-away to someone else who has. If you are the leader of a meeting, planning requires that you ensure that the participants have done their required preparation. The quality of the meeting will be a direct result of not just your preparation but also the preparation of the participants. This leads to the next key word.
2. Inform – If you are the leader, you want to inform the participants (one or one hundred) of the Intended Result (the Desired Take-away) of the meeting. This allows the participants to prepare. In addition, let the participants know your expectations of them. This also allows them to prepare. As a participant, inform the leader of what you intend to put forward at the meeting (particularly if you anticipate it will be contentious or controversial). This does not mean you need to obtain the leader’s approval on what you want to say or do. Rather, your information allows the leader to prepare for the implications of what you will say or do. No less important, when letting the leader know what you intend to say or do relative to a particular Agenda item, you have an opportunity to gauge the reaction, and possible, “next move” on your position.
On a more mundane level, as a leader and as a participant you want to be clear on the location and time of a meeting. The Agenda and Intended Result can dictate best time and location. Conversely, time and location can influence the likelihood of effecting the Agenda and achieving the Intended Result. These factors should be components of the planning process. For example, a meeting intended to advance dialog between contentious parties should take place around a conference table not in a meeting space with theater-style seating. A meeting of two or three people gets lost in a large room. The intimacy usually essential to achieving the Intended Result of a meeting of this size cannot be created.
3. Target – As the leader you want to “target” the right participants or stakeholders. In my personal observation, many “bad” meetings are the result of not having enough of the right participants present or the result of having too many of the wrong participants present. As a participant, you want to assess the Agenda and the Intend Result and decide whether you are in a position to contribute to the meeting. If you do not think you can contribute to a meeting, inform the leader of your view. As a frequent meeting leader, I have come to appreciate that having a participant who does not want to be in a meeting, who thinks he or she cannot make a contribution, is detrimental to process and Intended Result. I generally support a requested “opt-out” request. On the other hand, I love it when an “opt-out” says to me, “I heard about the meeting. Boy, I should have been there.” It has happened more than once. The best measure of your competency as a meeting leader will be participants and would-be participants wanting to be invited to one of your meetings because they know something of consequence will occur.
Something of consequence will regularly occur when you, as a leader or a participant target your personal take-away from each Agenda item. A personal take-away is the consequence you want to see. You must know, before the meeting, what you want to see happen with each Agenda item in order to influence or shape that consequence. When provided an Agenda before a meeting, I often write out my personal take-away in the margin next to each item. When possible, I map out the steps I will take to the target: achieving my personal take-away.
Because I consider setting targets to be so important and see an Agenda as an essential tool for targeting, I now – whenever possible – opt-out of meetings that do not have one. When I must attend a meeting for which an Agenda has not been provided beforehand, I will not allow the meeting to begin until I have asked the questions, “What is the Intended Result of this meeting and what steps are we going to follow in achieve it?” With the answers to those questions, I am able to proceed as a contributing participant.
4. Contain – Everything about a great meeting involves “containment”. It all begins with an Intended Result and an Agenda. The only things that should be discussed at a meeting are the Agenda items. The Agenda items should only be worked in consideration of the Intended Result. It is the responsibility of the meeting leader to contain and focus the energies of the participants to those ends. No less the case, participants can and should “lead from the middle” and assist the meeting leader in bringing maverick participants back into constructive process. Location and timing are containment focus points. As a meeting leader, you establish control and behavior containment from the outset of a meeting when you start on time. As a participant, you should demand that a meeting start when it is scheduled to start.
Ground rules are an excellent containment tool for the leader and the participants. When a participant is acting out, use the ground rules to reel them back in. Even if a participant is only doing something as innocuous tool as wandering off the Agenda, reference to the ground rules can contain them without confrontation. Incidentally, whenever possible, put your most important ground rules on the Agenda so that participants are aware of them before the meeting.
Just as a meeting must begin on time, it must end on time. The leader must control the Agenda such that all items on it are addressed – only specific to the Intended Result – within the provided timeframe. Two tools can assist the leader in this effort. The first involves assigning a Time Limit for consideration of each item on the Agenda. When eighty percent of the time allocated to an item on the Agenda has elapsed, the leader and the participants must make a decision to close the item or to continue consideration at the expense of the time allocated to another Agenda item. The control over this process is the commitment and discipline to end the meeting on time. The second tool is a dedicated Timekeeper. The Timekeeper takes the pressure off the leader and the participants by knowing the amount of time allocated to an Agenda item and the time remaining available relative to that and keeping everyone else in the meeting aware of it. The Timekeeper calls out, in designated increments, the amount of time remaining for consideration of an Agenda item. This control promotes containment and keeps the leader and the participants focused on achieving their personal Intended Result (or take-away). After all, Parkinson’s Law dictates, “work expands so as to fit the time available for its completion.”
5. Hasten – Time and Tempo are everything in a quality meeting. It is not enough to start and end a meeting on time. Effective meeting leaders and participants control the rate of speed of a meeting. As a meeting leader you want to ensure maximum participation; you want to get everyone involved. Get everyone talking and change it up, do not let any one person talk too often or too long in any instance. This is not just about sharing the load. It is about tempo and boredom. The same person speaking all the time gets boring. Even the best speaker gets boring if we have to listen too long. As a participant, appreciate that your comments, observations, opinions and positions will be best received as short, crisp and timely inputs. Leave others in the meeting wanting more of what you have to offer. I once had a particularly good meeting (any and every meeting) participant tell me that he would never speak more than four times in any meeting. He admitted that he had a lot to say and that it was sometimes difficult to pick the right four times to speak. He often wished he had not exhausted his quota when he had another comment to make. However, he always exercised his discipline. When he did speak, his words were well chosen and crisp. More than once, I heard someone say they wished he spoke more at meetings because he always had something great to say. That was his great secret: he always left people wanting more of him.
I found a quote I love, but I cannot tell you the author. It is, “History is written by people who attend meetings, stay to the end and keep the minutes.” If you want to be a great meeting leader and participant, get involved. Look for opportunities to lead. If you cannot lead the meeting, embrace a supporting role. Offer to help the leader prepare the agenda. If you can, volunteer to keep and publish the Minutes. For years, I have offered to aspiring leaders that they should look for opportunities to write Executive Briefs, Position Papers and other Reports. For one, I have always sought out the opportunity to draft a contract or a working document (like charters, by-laws, rules and regulations, policies, procedures and protocols). Even if your original product is substantially modified, amended or altered, it all happens from your document. Someone smarter than me once said, “He who puts it on paper first wins.” Minutes are the corporate memory of a meeting. As an author of minutes, you can report out exactly what was said, done and decided while still infusing your perspective into the product by virtue of the words and phrasing you use in the construction.
Make the next meeting you are in as good for you as you make it for the organization you represent.